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A few weeks ago, I submitted a problem on this forum, and asked if your kid could do it. We had an interesting discussion, a few people could do it, others argued about terminology, but no one stated their kid could actually do it. Here is another on from the Arizona Standards for high school Math.
My parents can both do it, but I don't think their grandkids can.
Here goes:
Maria opens a savings account with 300 Dollars. The bank will pay her 2% annually. Interest will compound every 6 months. How much will be in the account at the end of one year?
Go ahead, let them use their calculators. They will still (likely) miss it.
OK. High-school children should definitely be able so solve such problems - regardless of their track. College-bound, not college-bound, you name it.
It is scary that many can't.
Unfortunately, few young people realize that the prosperity and easy-breezy lives they have seen their parents and grandparents enjoy, had little to do with their amazing talents and efforts and everything to do with lots of natural resources available and closed borders for the most part.
Never mind that their parents and grandparents WOULD have actually been able to solve this problem.
In the meantime, American education got dumbed down ahead of everyone else's and borders were open.
It'll be a looooong and painful fall from the top.
The reason I am using this problem is because I am trying to make a point to the countless parents who have tried to convince themselves that their kids can just use the calculator and everything will be fine. It's not going to be fine, because they won't know how to key it in, and most have ignored the teacher's lessons on compound interest. Syracusa, did you notice in our discussion of the last problem, not one parent stated their kid could do it? This is 8th Grade Math...........Arizona ranks somewhat poorly as a State, but this is a State Standard, and I think it should be.
The calculator has NOTHING to do with this problem. The arithmetic involved here can easily be done in one's head, moving the dot/comma (depending on the country you grew up in) left or right, however many decimals you need when you divide; or you just put the whole darn thing on paper. (I can hardly ever do any calculations in my head that go above 20...but give me pen and paper and I will calculate the Universe for you!)
The point of this problem is to be able to rationalize through it - the algorithm itself.
Calculators won't be able to save you if you don't understand what needs adding, multiplying or dividing here.
What I can tell you is this: I teach college and I often provide a final grade formula at the end of the syllabus, whereby I inform students how much of the final grade each assignment/course requirement is worth (so it involves calculating "percent of", among others).
At the end of the semester, students should be able to use the formula to figure out how much their final grade is (before I officially post the grades, as many are understandably impatient). I have noticed that many students are simply NOT able to use the formula and they just want me to calculate it for them. I don't. I tell them to wait until the official grades are posted.
Then, when I think about it, I realize it is hardly their fault as they were simply not confronted with high expectations on Academic Basics during k-12.
As I was lamenting in other threads, classical education is almost completely ignored in the US and it is often replaced with fun, fluff, apparently advanced yet so superficially approached projects. The result is what you lament in THIS thread.
A few weeks ago, I submitted a problem on this forum, and asked if your kid could do it. We had an interesting discussion, a few people could do it, others argued about terminology, but no one stated their kid could actually do it. Here is another on from the Arizona Standards for high school Math.
My parents can both do it, but I don't think their grandkids can.
Here goes:
Maria opens a savings account with 300 Dollars. The bank will pay her 2% annually. Interest will compound every 6 months. How much will be in the account at the end of one year?
Go ahead, let them use their calculators. They will still (likely) miss it.
Any calculator with parenthesis makes this problem easy.
Enter the formula 300(1+0.01)^2
I get you do these posts to make yourself feel better but really what is the point for the rest of us? Seriously, how many people need to be able to do compound interest on a standard calculator?
Can your kid do it--that's my point, as the title states. I can easily do it in my head, but would allow those reliant on their calculators to use them. And what do you know, the first cynical parent of a GT angel just missed it. Using your keystroke sequence the answer given is 36.997--WRONG.
would you like to try again or maybe you should wait for the short bus field trip to count leaves.
that actually gives the wrong answer of 306.09, and it assumes that students would know that 6 months is semi-annual.
I entered 300 to start and 0 per month, 2% annual rate and it gave me the wrong answer.
Calculator keystrokes would be 1+.01=x^2*300
with x^2 being the x squared button
Can your kid do it--that's my point, as the title states. I can easily do it in my head, but would allow those reliant on their calculators to use them. And what do you know, the first cynical parent of a GT angel just missed it. Using your keystroke sequence the answer given is 36.997--WRONG.
would you like to try again or maybe you should wait for the short bus field trip to count leaves.
WRONG on your part. You seem ignorant of the fact that more than one type of calculator exists.
For example I was using a ti82 and you are 100% wrong in saying that formula does not work on that calculator.
Second, who are you to make short bus jokes when you do not seem to comprehend that my formula gave an answer of 306.03 when entered into my calculator?
Unless you are claiming that is not the answer.
My students can absolutely do problems with formulas, stepwise functions, correlation/regression, and an endless variety of other problems both on and off their calculators (since every exam I give has both a calc and non-calc portion). I am also a science teacher and not a math teacher so I have taught them compound interest as it is irrelevant but we do similar problems for predicting the growth of a population. And yes, my students can do those problems as well, on and off a calculator.
Do your students actually know their calculators that well? And how could you say compound interest is irrelevant? Because all your students are on free lunch and will never have a savings account? It is required to graduate from HS in Arizona, and it probably is in many other States, as well.
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